Beran was getting on my nerves again. But there was something else, too. He wasn’t acting like the alien super-genius, but like an old man trying to get a younger one to start using his head.
At that point, it began to dawn on me. The Starcore had been in Far Butte, Nevada. Greenland had held ancient underground facilities, and there was a deep structure at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.
“This has to do with your hidden foe,” I said.
Beran nodded encouragingly.
“Are you saying this is an ancient Polarion place?” I asked.
“I have begun to suspect so,” he said.
“Why did CAU blow it up, then?”
“Who said they did?”
“Your hidden foe again, he or she blew it up?”
“Logan, I am surprised at your stupidity. You are still failing to see the obvious. You believe your government put together the CAU. I now believe that is false. Although, it would not surprise me if the people in the know in your government believe they ordered the creation of the Counter Alien Unit.”
“Listen, I appreciate the lesson. I really do. But can’t you just get to the freaking point?”
“Don’t misinterpret my patience,” Beran warned. “There is a reason I am attempting to broaden your thinking. For one thing, it actually helps me think to verbalize these things. Someone has masterfully used the underwater Arctic Ocean base or the items found in it. Jenna gave you a story to indicate that the Director and Kazz did these things. No. I doubt humans were the ones who did so.”
“Polarions?” I asked, dubiously.
Beran smiled in a predatory way. “Polarions make the most sense. That would explain the clones, this underground base and the extraordinary—”
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said, interrupting. “You captured CAU people. I saw your Tosks herding them onto floaters. I don’t know why I forgot about the captives. What happened to them?”
Beran stared at me before saying, “They are at the Saturn Station under continuous interrogation and study.”
“By your Tosks?” I asked, outraged.
“Don’t be absurd. I have confederates of high ability and mental acuity. They have preferred to remain in the background at a Saturn moon.”
I shook my head at these revelations. Kazz had exploded. The clone Director had exploded. Whoever this “hidden foe” might be had a ruthless streak a mile long. I could see Argon sacrificing humans in whatever he thought might be for the greater good. Yet, what would Argon—or any Polarion, for that matter—believe was the greater good?
I’d seen the Director at the moon base. Beran had tormented and degraded the man. I couldn’t trust the Antaran, not after having witnessed that, and not seeing the way he’d sacrificed his Tosks at the drop of a hat. The dominie had a philosopher’s brutality to do anything in the furtherance of his pet theories.
I eyed the hole with the steel ladder and wondered about jumping in and seeing what would happen. I didn’t like the idea of splatting at the bottom. Why take such a crazy risk when there might be other avenues to try?
The new implications and possibilities continued to rattle in my mind. It all gave me a headache.
“I’m not an Antaran,” I told Beran. “I’m an old-style Terran, a throwback to how we used to be before the twenty-first century. For some reason, you’ve started treating me with kid gloves. Yeah… That happened after Kazz or his clone blew up. Did he almost kill you? Did the near-death experience give you a heart?”
Beran stared at me as if I were a caterpillar about to begin my metamorphosis. What was he thinking? What was his ultimate plan regarding me?
“Why have you begun treating me differently?” I asked.
“I doubt you’ll believe my answer,” he said. “It has to do with luck—yours, in this instance. You have far too much of it. You make uncanny guesses without enough information and have survived far too many critical dangers. The preposterousness of all that finally penetrated my intellect. Once I turned my reason upon the problem, several interesting solutions reared up.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“I have been pondering that for days, weighing one possibility with another. I know about your gene therapy. You heal faster than a normal human. You have interacted with the Starcore and a Polarion. You have gone to a different dimension and been influenced by a Polarion machine that gave you a vision and what else…?”
“What do you mean what else? That was it.”
“I don’t think so. I think the Polarions have altered you. I think the gene therapy began that. I have begun to suspect that Rax has played a deeper game than you realize. You are not like other humans. That is clear. What does that make you? I am uncertain regarding that as well.”
“None of that explains why you’re treating me differently.”
“Of course it does,” Beran said. “I have given you the explanation. I believe I would not have discovered the invisible rod to the hidden hatch unless you were along. In some manner that I cannot yet recognize, you have a greater propensity toward…promoting problem solving, shall we say. You seem to function as a catalyst.”
“That’s just gobbledygook,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything concrete.”
“Oh, it most certainly does. It is the reason I am treating you like a fellow dominie instead of the dullard human that you pretend to be.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Then how about removing this collar? If I’m so special—”
Beran raised his baton and pressed a switch.
My collar clicked. Surprised, I reached up and removed it from my throat. With a sudden lurch, I hurled the metal from me so it clattered along the floor.
“Emotional,” Beran observed.
“I’m not a slave or a dog,” I snarled.
“Quite true,” Beran said, checking his wrist. It held what looked like a wristwatch. “I believe that is long enough.” He turned to the Tosks and gave harsh commands.
They peered at the hole in the floor deep under the earth. The first one headed to it, slid his feet in and began to climb down. The others followed until it was just me, Beran and my two former guardians.
“After you,” Beran said.
“What’s down there?” I asked.
“That’s what we’re about to find out.”
“Why did we wait before we descended?”
“A case of caution,” he said.
“I know that,” I said. “I want to know why.”
“Prudence. More, at this point, I will not say. Are you ready?”
I looked at the hole, at Beran, the two Tosks and threw my hands into the air.
“Sure, why not?” I said.
I crouched, put my feet in, turned around and began to climb down the steel ladder.
-32-
I’d never been on a ladder for so long. This one went on and on for what seemed like forever. And then it went farther.
The Tosks all wore hardhats, and soon after we began to descend, their helmet lamps snapped on. Before this, only half the Tosks had been using the lamps in their helmets. The greater illumination gave a needed boost to my morale, at least.
The process seemed endless: one step down until the ball of the foot was solidly upon the next lower rung, then one hand down to a secure grip, another foot down and then another hand, only to start all over again.
My feet began to ache from the repeated pressure-point contact on the metal rungs. Ten minutes later, my hands started to throb. I don’t know why I hadn’t looked up yet, but I finally did, wanting to see how Beran was doing.
He wasn’t holding onto the ladder, of course. I should have remembered. He floated above me, using the gravity mesh in the soles of his feet to simply drift at the same speed we descended.
I felt an intense sense of injustice. If we hurt, he should hurt. I suppose that was juvenile thinking, but it’s what I felt nonetheless.
The monotony of the climb had dulled my thinking. Seeing Beran doing it the easy way cl
eared my thoughts. How were we going to get back up? I know. We would climb up. But it’s one thing going down as compared to climbing all that way back up.
“I need a break,” I said.
Beran gave an order. The Tosk below me on the ladder stopped. I’m supposing the others did as well.
I weaved my arms over a rung, clutched my wrists and almost slumped in exhaustion. The Tosk below me peered up, no doubt checking on Beran. The werewolf-like creature did not seem to be the least bit tired.
After a few minutes, the rung began to dig into my arms. I straightened.
“Are you rested?” Beran asked.
“I have an observation to make,” I told him. “We’re never going to cart the chronowarp up this hole.”
“That seems like an elementary deduction,” Beran said.
“So what’s the point of this descent, anyway?”
“We shall see once we get there. Are you ready?”
“I guess so.”
Beran gave the command and the descent continued.
It had gotten hotter the farther we went down. If you’ve ever been in a cave, you would have noticed how much cooler it was inside than outside. The same didn’t hold for a deep, deep hole. After a time, the hole got hotter. In the deepest mines, heat management was as much a problem as was drinking-water and having enough air to breathe.
“How deep is this?” I panted.
“We seem to be coming to a junction.”
“You mean the bottom, right?”
“No. I mean a junction.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
I looked down and saw the Tosk directly below me lean to the right and step onto what looked like a landing. I descended a few more rungs and did likewise.
The Tosks crouched like primitives or lay on the floor. By the helmet-lamps, it seemed the junction, as Beran had called it, was a low area surrounding the hole and ladder. I couldn’t walk completely upright here, but had to bend my head.
I practically collapsed to sit against a wall, glad to give my hands and feet a break.
Beran had to bend over to move in here. He sat near me, but did not lean against a wall. Instead, he sat with his back straight, exuding energy. I remembered some of the super-glands he’d boasted about earlier. I guess they worked. Of course, he’d just been floating, not climbing down a ladder like the rest of us.
“I am reassessing the situation,” Beran told me.
“We aren’t heading to a secret storage unit?” I asked.
“Precisely,” he said. “I suspect we both thought of it as an access-way comparable to a basement in a house or possibly a vault in a bank. I no longer believe that.”
“You don’t believe the chronowarp is down here?” I asked.
“As to that, I cannot say. We shall continue soon.”
“Why the rest then?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, as he had on other occasions, Beran froze.
The Tosks grew agitated just like last time.
I studied the dominie. He stood as if he were chiseled out of marble. He did not breathe. He did not exude—
I leaned toward him and reached out.
The nearest Tosk snarled at me in warning. I looked at the huge creature. His fur was standing on end and his exposed fangs looked bigger than ever. I felt as if the Tosk barely restrained himself from biting me, and that if I actually touched Beran, he and the other Tosks would rend me to pieces like lions did to a captured zebra.
Instead of using this time to gain their freedom, the Tosks became increasingly protective of their tormenter.
I shrugged, collapsing back against the wall.
Two minutes and forty-seven seconds later—and yes, I timed it—Beran breathed once more.
At that point, the Tosks relaxed.
“What are you doing when you freeze like a statue?” I asked.
Beran climbed quickly to his feet. “It is time to move.”
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
The fierce energy in his eyes that had been hooded for a time now radiated intensely. “I believe we are about to discover a truth, a new truth.”
“Why?”
“I have sensed… Go!” he said. “I must know if my readings are correct or not. This time, we are climbing down until we reach the bottom.”
-33-
We assumed the same order as before, ten Tosks, me, Beran and the last two Tosks bringing up the rear.
The rest at the junction had helped me a little, but all too soon the front bottom part of my feet began to throb again, and my hands went from aching to numb. I kept moving. I wasn’t going to let the Tosks out-hustle me.
After a time, I began to hear a thudding sound from below. It was low, steady and finally became rhythmic. The farther down we went, the louder the throb became.
“Do you know what that is?” I asked Beran.
“I have several theories.”
I moved down several more rungs before asking, “Care to share your theories?”
“It is possible we are descending into a World Hive.”
“What?” I asked. “You mean like giant ants or bees?”
“There is a strange order of creatures…that have taken themselves beyond Galactic Law. They maneuver between the stars in steel worlds—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, interrupting. “Are you talking about giant spaceships?”
“If you’ll cease your prattle long enough, I will explain.”
I should have bristled at his words and tone. The steady throbbing sounds emanating from the guts of the Earth had shaken me, though. I did not like the sounds. They struck me as ominous, most likely alien and detrimental to human life.
Beran continued his lecture. “The Harkas—the name of the insect-like beings maneuvering in the steel worlds—have never acknowledged the authority of the Galactic Guard. That is for good reason. The Harkas devour worlds. They send teams of soldiers and a queen deep into a targeted world. There, they build a hive, small at first and then expanding it into a giant construct hidden in the depths of the planet. In time, the Harkas begin to send squads onto the surface, kidnapping the aboriginals. The aboriginals become workers in some cases, and food in others.”
“Whoa, whoa—food? We’re heading into a hive where the aliens think we’re food?”
Beran ignored the interruption.
“The Harkas continue to build, continue to feed, until the world hive has encompassed everything on the planet. At that point, the place is a husk, used-up. At that point, the Harkas launch new steel worlds to travel to other worlds, to begin the consumption process anew.”
“Let me ask this again. You think that’s what we’re descending toward?”
“That is one possibility, certainly,” Beran said.
I peered down the ladder, past the Tosk below me. The throbbing, the steady rhythmic sound coming up unnerved me even more now than before. I imagined it as the droning of a million alien insects.
“We should head back up and alert Earth’s militaries,” I said.
“No. We will descend to the bottom.”
“And if we land inside a Harka Hive?” I nearly shouted.
“I deem that as doubtful.”
“But you just said—”
“I am logical, Logan. I consider all possibilities, giving each a weight as I amass more data. Surely, it has become obvious to you that I am the greatest dominie of the Antares Institute. Thus, I do not emotionalize about a subject. It is one of the sources of my strength.”
“Just so we’re straight,” I said. “You don’t really believe we’re headed down into an alien hive?”
“I have deemed that to be of low probability.”
“Why bother telling me about the Harkas, then?”
“Perhaps because I am disinclined to present the greatest possibility,” Beran said. “It is too breathtaking, too unbelievable to consider yet.”
&n
bsp; “You’ve obviously already considered it.”
“You must now save your breath,” Beran said. “We still have a long way to travel.”
He proved right about that. I descended farther into the Earth via the steel ladder. The throbbing sound gained a clanging tone after a time. That clanging grew louder and more persistent. It shook me, shook the ladder and made the descent harder than I would have imagined.
It became difficult to grip the throbbing rungs, and it was even harder to keep my feet from sliding off the vibrating steps.
“Is there another junction?” I shouted up at Beran. “I’m beat.”
He glowed again within that blue nimbus of his. It told me he feared this place as much as I did. He did not bother to answer, however.
I didn’t have much choice but to keep descending.
I’ll say this for the Tosks: they were troopers. The sounds and the fact of the hole’s mysterious nature seemed to have no effect upon them. They had been nervous earlier at the hatch, but they weren’t agitated anymore, at least not visibly so.
At last, the throbbing, clanging sounds become ponderous and nearly deafening. We could no longer communicate even by shouting at each other because no one could have heard anyone else.
At that point, I nearly lost it as a breeze suddenly blew against me.
One moment, I was in the narrow steel tube. The next, I was descending the ladder surrounded by black emptiness. The Tosk helmet-lamps speared back and forth in various directions, alighting upon nothing but more emptiness. No walls in sight.
Despite my exhaustion, I envisioned what that meant. The breeze continued to blow against me. The lamps showed nothing. That meant I was descending a ladder into what had to be a gargantuan cavern.
The sounds of the throbbing, clanking machine grew stronger. It was definitely closer to us.
We miniscule creatures descended the ladder until a hellish red glow showed dark machines moving giant pistons back and forth. These pistons moved horizontally as if on a city-sized steam engine out of the American Old West. The hellish glow also showed me ground or rock.
We’d almost reached the end of the hateful ladder into the guts of the Earth.
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